O inconsciente nas imagens: A representação de gatos na arte de Adelina Gomes

Abstract

This Undergraduate Work proposes the articulation of analytical psychology and visual arts. The schizophrenic is immersed in the depths of the unconsciousness, symbolically in communication with the conscious through dreams and artistic creations. The physician Nise da Silveira, by opposing the methods of traditional psychiatry, points to artistic expression as a way of communication between the client’s inner world and the external world. Starting from the image of the cat, constant in the works of the artist Adelina Gomes, this study intends to investigate the image of the cat as symbolic animal in a comparative historical-artistic approach that goes through both the artist’s life trajectory and other representations of the animal in the history of art and mythologies. The artistic expression of psychotic patients, by emerging from unconscious contents, suffers little influence of reason and is situated in a field of greater formal freedom, free from external aesthetic pressures. In this context, art and life are not differentiated: art thus becomes an expression of existence.